In recent years, much progress has been made towards providing efficient and convenient methods for engaging in videoconferences in which conference participants can share and collaborate on program data files. However, due to the cost and complexity of the conferencing equipment, businesses typically have few (if any) videoconferencing configurations on premises. It is also common to have to go to third-party providers of conferencing equipment in order to complete a videoconference session.
Since the goal of collaborative videoconferencing is the sharing of data, a fundamental requirement is that the data be brought to the conferencing premises. Unfortunately, getting the data to the conferencing equipment is not a simple task. Generally, the data can be quite large, and there are few easily portable resources that also have capacity to hold large data. In addition, even if the data fits on certain large capacity portable media, there is no guarantee that the conference location will support the media. In addition, media is frequently lost or damaged in transit to the conference.
One alternative to manually carrying presentation data to a conference has been to map, over a network, a local drive letter on the conferencing equipment to a source computer (e.g., a presenter's desktop computer containing presentation files). Then one can use normal operating system commands to copy the requisite data to the conference equipment. However, this solution is problematic, since managing networking connections can be difficult, and the conference curtailed or derailed if improper permissions or other issues prevent the mapping. In addition, for security purposes, conferencing equipment is typically running an exclusive application program that prevents a presenter from manipulating the underlying operating system of the conference equipment in order to effect the drive mapping.
What is needed, then, is a way to reliably get conferencing data to conference participants, while utilizing standard applications.